ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Retailers and their Internet providers spent the past year making sure they were ready for lots of web traffic today. It is Cyber Monday, the traditional day for online shopping deals.
PHILIP BURROUGHS: We're seeing a really good customer experience in terms of the way the sites are moving from a speed point of view, the way that availability is representing itself. So, you know, that's a very, very positive thing.
SIEGEL: That's Phil Burroughs, vice president of retail and hospitality for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. Verizon provides service to dozens of the nation's top retailers. And Burroughs says by midday today...
BURROUGHS: We're seeing a, I'd say on average about a 35 percent increase in terms of both traffic and order volume, this Cyber Monday versus last Cyber Monday.
SIEGEL: Comscore, an industry research firm, predicts that overall retailers will do $2 billion in online sales today. And that would be a new record.
Ezra Palmer is vice president at the research firm eMarketer. He says more than ever consumers are using phones and tablets to shop.
EZRA PALMER: About 15 percent of all e-commerce will be mobile commerce for the holiday this season.
SIEGEL: And Palmer says the big uptick in online shopping began last week.
PALMER: Consumers now can shop from any device anywhere. Half of all mobile phone users have smartphones. There's a fair amount of cyber shopping going on at the Thanksgiving table these days.
SIEGEL: And Phil Burroughs at Verizon confirms that.
BURROUGHS: If I were to show you a traffic diagram, you would see a huge spike around 4 p.m. Eastern Time. You know, so we talk about the post-turkey blitz. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
